Health at COP29

Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis

Global health

Health workers are already being transformed by climate change. COP29 stakeholders can either support this transformation to strengthen health systems, or risk watching the health workforce collapse under mounting pressures. The World Health Organization’s “COP29 Special Report on Climate Change and Health: Health is the Argument for Climate Action“ highlights the health sector’s role in climate action. Health professionals are eyewitnesses and first responders to climate impacts on people and communities firsthand – from escalating respiratory diseases to spreading infections and increasing humanitarian disasters. The report positions health workers as “trusted members of society” who are “uniquely positioned” to champion climate action. The context is stark: WHO projects a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, with six million in climate-vulnerable sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, our communities and healthcare systems already bear the costs of climate change through increasing disease burdens and system strain. Health workers are responding, because …

Movement for Immunization Agenda IA2030

Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030): grounding action in local realities to reach the unreached

Global health

WHO’s 154th Executive Board meeting provided a sobering picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic reversed decades of progress in expanding global immunization coverage and controlling vaccine-preventable diseases. In response, the World Health Organization is calling for action “grounded in local realities”. Growing evidence supports fresh approaches that do exactly that. Tom Newton-Lewis is part of the community of researchers and practitioners who have observed that “health systems are complex and adaptive” and, they say, that explains why top-down control rarely succeeds. However, top-down control and directive management appear to have been key to how immunization programmes achieved impressive results in previous decades. Hence, it may be challenging for the current generation of global immunization leaders to consider that enabling approaches that leverage intrinsic motivation, foster collective responsibility, and empower teams – especially for local staff – are the ones needed now. One example of an enabling approach is the Movement for Immunization …

WHO Director-General says Immunization Agenda 2030 off-track

Widening inequities: Immunization Agenda 2030 remains “off-track”

Global health

The WHO Director General’s report to the 154th session of the Executive Board on progress towards the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) goals paints a “sobering picture” of uneven global recovery since COVID-19. As of 2022, 3 out of 7 main impact indicators remain “off-track”, including numbers of zero-dose children, future deaths averted through vaccination, and outbreak control targets. Current evidence indicates substantial acceleration is essential in order to shift indicators out of the “off-track” categories over the next 7 years. While some indicators showed recovery from pandemic backsliding, the report makes clear these improvements are generally insufficient to achieve targets set for 2030. While some indicators have improved from 2021, overall performance still “lags 2019 levels” (para 5). Specifically, global coverage of three childhood DTP vaccine doses rose from 81% in 2021 to 84% in 2022, but remains below the 86% rate achieved in 2019 before the pandemic (para 5). …

TechNet conference how to to open access to global health conferences-small

What did we learn from the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) in its first two years?

Global health, Innovation, The Geneva Learning Foundation

At a World Health Organization conference in Panama, The Geneva Learning Foundation is hosting an Innovations Café today. The session’s title is “Connected learning to accelerate local impact at global scale: Year 1 of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)”. What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)? Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) is the world’s strategy, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2020, to achieve the global goals for immunization. In March 2022, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) launched a call to form a movement in support of IA2030. By June 2023, over 16,000 health workers were participating. More than 80% work in districts and health facilities and over half are government workers. 70% work in fragile contexts such as armed conflict, remote areas, urban poverty, and other challenges. This ground-up commitment has the potential to complement the top-down work of the IA2030 global partners, if this …

How close to the village can a global, digital education initiative get?

Global health

This is the final in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). “Opportunities to contain the virus were lost soon after, largely because of a lack of trust between local communities and the officials and medical professionals trying to nip the epidemic in the bud.” (Petherick 2015:591) Online training of humanitarian professionals is one thing, but what about community participation? “Beneficiary communications” and “listening” approaches have emerged to encourage inclusive approaches to all aspects of humanitarian work. Learning needs to include not just professionals but also volunteers and affected families, whether or not they are involved in social mobilization efforts. As the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement has taught us, volunteers are far more than part-time humanitarians. They are embedded in …

Humanitarian Health Lessons Learned: Ebola

Learning in emergency operations: a pilot course to learn how we learn

Global health

This is the fourth in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). “Continuous learning at the individual level is necessary but not sufficient to influence perceived changes in […] performance. It is argued that learning must be captured and embedded in ongoing systems, practices, and structures so that it can be shared and regularly used to intentionally improve changes in knowledge performance.” (Marsick and Watkins 2003:134) Scholar is an online learning environment for collaborative learning developed through the education research and practice by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope of the University of Illinois College of Education. It is designed to produce (and not simply consume) knowledge, in order to develop higher-order thinking, analysis, reflection, evaluation, and application. It closely models forms …

Humanitarian Health Lessons Learned: Ebola

Online learning around Ebola so far

Global health

This is the third in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). “The responsible use of technology in humanitarian action offers concrete ways to make assistance more effective and accountable, and to reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience. Distance learning and online education are good examples of technology supporting these goals” (World Disasters Report 2013:10). There have been a number of online courses organized by humanitarian organizations as well as by higher education institutions. International organizations have developed e-learning courses such as MSF’s Ebola ebriefing and WHO’s Health Security Learning Platform, or leveraged existing online training packages such as IFRC’s scenario-based simulation modules on public health in emergencies. American, British, Dutch, and Swiss universities are amongst those who have produced open online …

Humanitarian Health Lessons Learned: Ebola

Why learning is key to the strategic shift in how the world manages health crises

Global health

This is the second in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). “Whereas health is considered the sovereign responsibility of countries, the means to fulfill this responsibility are increasingly global, and require international collective action and effective and efficient governance of the global health system.” (Stocking 2015:10) “Effective crisis management for health”, writes the World Health Organization in its management response to the Stocking report, “requires a series of strategic shifts” (Chan 2015:5). Calls for substantial modernization of emergency management capacity and preparedness have focused on resources to ensure rapid mobilization for the provision of logistics, operational support, and community mobilization. Yet, “the primary lesson so far has not been about the need for new response methods, but about human resources …